LYNNWOOD – Imagine if you could have a device in your car that allowed green lights to stay green an extra several seconds if you’re running behind.
Some buses in south Snohomish County already are equipped with those devices.
Community Transit, the city of Lynnwood and the University of Washington are testing an electronic signal that allows a stoplight to stay green – or change from red to green more quickly – for a bus that’s running behind schedule.
Buses on routes 100 and 101 on Highway 99 have been fitted with a device that emits a signal uniquely coded to that bus’s route. When the bus gets within 300 feet of an intersection, a device in the stoplight control cabinet at the intersection receives the bus’s signal.
If the bus is running late – and if several other circumstances line up – the signal can be made to stay green up to 15 seconds longer, or change to green up to 15 seconds earlier.
“It’s probably a good idea, as long as no one’s rights are being infringed or anything like that,” Paul Bakken of Mukilteo said as he waited for a bus north of Lynnwood on Friday. “It’s kind of cheating.”
The system has been in place about three weeks between the county line and 148th Street SW and will be used for another month before the results are reviewed, Lynnwood traffic engineer Dick Adams said.
Students in the University of Washington’s school of civil engineering will analyze the data and provide a report to Community Transit.
The transit agency has been using the system for nearly two years on 164th Street SW between I-5 and Highway 99, spokesman Tom Pearce said.
“It’s been working well on 164th,” he said.
It’s part of a broader program in which Community Transit plans to spend $5 million to equip 46 intersections and all its buses with the devices. Transit taxes are covering $934,000 of the cost, with the rest footed by the federal government.
The transit agency plans to have all its buses fitted with the devices by 2008, Pearce said.
A bus can get one to 15 extra seconds of green with a few seconds taken from each of the other directions, Adams said.
Maybe two cars going across don’t make the green that would have otherwise, he said.
A lot of stars have to align for it to happen.
The bus has to be between five and 20 minutes late. The change isn’t made if it would throw off the synchronization of the lights on the highway.
The change isn’t made during evening rush hours, because there’s not enough time to spare from the lights on the cross streets, Adams said.
The bus has to reach the intersection at the right time. If it’s too early or too late to take time away from the other directions, nothing can be done.
Also, the lights aren’t extended for a bus with low ridership.
“It makes no sense to help an empty bus,” Adams said.
Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.
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